Very inspirational this talk presented in the PyData London 2016. In it, Tetiana Ivanova describes her move from a position of Project Manager (possibly similar to mine at present time…) to one of Data Scientist.

She begins to talk about the “bubble” that education has undergone during the last two decades, a bubble that comes with an enormous increase in monetary investment to be able to afford a university degree. Tetiana also reflects on the benefit (or prejudice, in many cases) of continuing studies that end up with a PhD. From her point of view, this choice may occur a bit unconsciously (in the sense of not knowing well in which research project a student is going to dedicate 3-4 years), just because it is understood to be the “natural continuation” that is expected for someone who wants to strengthen his/her academic curriculum and successfully access to a very competitive labor market. She outlines the alternative approach she pursued to change her career, with a half-year self-training period, and how she focused her efforts to work as a Data Scientist.

Now, the video:

The slides of the talk are shown below:

How to become a data scientist in 6 months: a hacker's approach to career planning